Cape Cod

by Henry David Thoreau

Based on several trips to the Cape and originally published as a series of articles, Henry David Thoreau's Cape Cod is a remarkable work that depicts the natural beauty of Cape Cod and the nature that surrounds it. Thoreau, a consummate lover of the outdoors and nature is right at home in the Cape and he details his excitement of the area with naturalist portraits of the indigenous species and animals. Any lover of nature or of Cape Cod in general will delight in this captivating depiction of the area in the early to mid 1800s.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Travel, Classics, Philosophy, History, Essays

116 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1865

About the author

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

In 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1837, taught briefly, then turned to writing and lecturing. Becoming a Transcendentalist and good friend of Emerson, Thoreau lived the life of simplicity he advocated in his writings. His two-year experience in a hut in Walden, on land owned by Emerson, resulted in the classic, Walden: Life in the Woods (1854). During his sojourn there, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican war, for which he was jailed overnight. His activist convictions were expressed in the groundbreaking On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849). In a diary he noted his disapproval of attempts to convert the Algonquins "from their own superstitions to new ones." In a journal he noted dryly that it is appropriate for a church to be the ugliest building in a village, "because it is the one in which human nature stoops to the lowest and is the most disgraced." (Cited by James A. Haught in 2000 Years of Disbelief.) When Parker Pillsbury sought to talk about religion with Thoreau as he was dying from tuberculosis, Thoreau replied: "One world at a time."

Thoreau's philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. D. 1862.

More: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tho...

http://thoreau.eserver.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Da...

http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu....

http://www.biography.com/people/henry...

Reviews

[Matteo Negro]

Per la prima volta pubblicato il italia Cape Cod è un volume che raccoglie i ricordi di tre viaggi condotti da Thoreau, tra il 1849 e il 1855, attraverso la penisola del Massachusetts. Dopo la sfolgorante esperienza dei due anni trascorsi a Walden, nel bel mezzo di un paesaggio sostanzialmente terrestre, il grande maestro trascendentalista si accosta alla sublime bellezza dell'oceano come fonte inesauribile di spunti di riflessione esistenziale. L'oceano inteso come luogo selvaggio e immutabile nel tempo, indifferente all'agire dell'uomo e fonte di riflessione e meditazione profonda. Al di là della curiosa e interessante narrazione delle esperienze vissute a Cape Cod quello che colpisce il lettore è l'incredibile capacità di quest'uomo di stralciare il velo di apparenza e superficialità e andare a fondo per percepire e comprendere la vera essenza delle cose indipendentemente che queste siano persone, animali, piante, paesaggi o elementi naturali. Thoreau ci insegna a guardare il mondo con occhi indagatori e profondi e di andare oltre per percepire l'essenza stessa delle cose che ci circondano. Per aiutare il lettore ad immergersi nelle atmosfere di Cape Cod il libro è stato impreziosito con dieci dipinti di Edward Hopper. "La riva del mare è una specie di terra di nessuno, un punto di vista molto adatto per contemplare il mondo"